I’m thinking it was “see”. When telling a story like the one in the OP, I know I might slip into the present tense if it was a casual conversation … “So then he called, right? To ask when he could come back? And we see him out there, prepping in the parking lot!”. That kind of thing.
Editors shouldn’t correct errors in a direct quote unless the errors make it impossible to understand. Once the Washington Post quoted an athlete who used poor grammar (or a colloquialism, call it what you will), and a reader complained about publishing poor grammar. The point was apparently lost on the reader that “quote” means “what the guy actually said.”
No, they shouldn’t, and I didn’t say they should. Does that mean someone didn’t? According to the OP, it was a “short online article”. Unless we get a link we can’t say what sort of journalistic and editing standards we’re looking at.
And I didn’t say you did. Or they did. Or that anybody did anything. None of us know what was actually changed; I was just throwing a relevant opinion into the discussion. Nothing personal. 
I shouldn’t doubt it – you know how Caesar was always on about in omnibus partes – she probably caught it at one of those parties.
Or in “Sic semper tyrannis”, “Thus always to tyrants”, the motto on Virginia’s state seal, and what Boothe said when he shot Lincoln.
I do know the rule. I figured the sheer hyperbolic ridiculousness of what I posted in brackets, *plus *a disclaimer, should have been enough for anyone to figure out that it was a joke. Apparently not.
As long as there is no misdirection, and changes are clearly labeled, making changes to quotes can be perfectly legitimate, even if it isn’t “impossible” to understand. It depends on the nature, purpose, and tone of the publication in question, as well as the purpose for the quotation.
And a partial quote, with clearly marked editorial changes means “partially what the guy actually said, indicated by the appropriate marks.” Nothing wrong with that. Not all quotations are subject to the same purpose, as you seem to imply.
I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said. I had certain examples in mind as the tacit context for my comments, and realize that my comments mistakenly appear to intend to be universal. My opinion was specific to the discussion of the quote in the OP where one poster suggested that maybe “[saw]” was a correction of the speaker’s choice of verb form.
I agree that any modification to a quote can be legitimate and is a matter of judgment and context, as long as the modification is clearly marked as such. However, as a reader (not a professional writer or journalist), I expect quotes in a newspaper to be as close to the original as possible.
I could not find the athlete’s quote that I mentioned but let me make up a similar example.
“That game was tough but we ain’t gonna get beat by no last-place team.”
One reader objected to poor grammar in whatever the actual quote was. I would want to see the exact quote. I imagine the reader might have preferred something like this:
“That game was tough but we [aren’t going to allow ourselves to be beaten] by [a] last-place team.”
As a reader, I find the rewrite unacceptable because the reporter has essentially interpreted and rewritten the quote, losing the color and immediacy of quoting the athlete exactly. In that case an indirect quote would be a better choice.
A case where a change is essential might be something like this:
“Smith threw Wesson the gun, but it landed on the ground and he [Smith] picked it up.”
Actually [sic] (always in brackets, not parentheses. Anything in parentheses is assumed to be part of the direct quote. Brackets indicate an editorial interjection) means “thus” or “like this” in Latin, and in direct quotes it’s used to indicate that a mistake in spelling or grammar is original to the quote and not a mistake by the person doing the quoting. It’s not used just to point out a mistake but to make sure the right person gets the blame for it.
Actually I have seen “(sic)” using parentheses, especially in newspapers. It’s a stylistic matter and it is usually unambiguous, and, thus, appropriate.
Editors need to preserve language but they also have to watch out for bias in the way reporters hear and interpret people’s speech. There are some gray areas here. I’ve seen publications taken to task for preserving the nuances of Ebonics when quoting black people, or quoting Southern speakers in ways that highlight their accent (“I’m gonna go shoppin’”). On the other hand, “y’all” should be preserved IMO even if the speaker is addressing one person, which is ungrammatical. How should a reporter handle a Chicagoan who says “youse” instead of “you”? If a college student says “like” every third word, should that be preserved in the quote–and is it the same answer if a CEO says “um” a lot?
Another issue is swear words. Newspapers tend to substitute tamer versions in brackets, but the original word wasn’t unclear, it simply wasn’t fit for publication.
Of course it was obvious that it was a joke. The point is that the rule doesn’t say, “don’t edit the contents of a quote box unless it’s a joke.” If you know the rule, then follow the rule.
Sorry, my point was that I assumed things were a bit more flexible when I *clearly *wasn’t in *any way *attempting to misrepresent what someone else had said, nor could anyone have possibly interpreted my edit as anything truly indicating what someone else had said. But, as I’ve said already, I see that was a mistaken impression.
Or as Dorothy Parker said when quoting a particularly glurgy passage from a book she was reviewing: “… [sic. Sic as a dog.] …”
Also it sometimes happens that the quote wouldn’t make sense without having read a long antecedent passage that went before it. In this case the bracketed words can connect the dots, as it were, for the reader. IMO brackets should never be used to add to or take away from the intended meaning of the original, or to mislead the reader as to the originator’s grasp of grammar or spelling or what have you.
Just for the record, here’s the rule:
Bolding mine. The rule is pretty clear.
Any further discussion of this matter should be taken to ATMB.
How’s this, then: “The generally accepted convention is that any material in curved parentheses (-) is matter placed within them by the person being quoted, while any material within square brackets [-], including [sic], is supplied by the editor or quoter for clarification purposes. This is a stylistic matter and the distinction is not always made.”
That’s better, but it’s still overstating things a bit. After all, if you’re quoting speech, it’s usually not realistic to transcribe anything as a parenthetical. People don’t talk in parentheses.
Yes, but written material can also be quoted, and that’s a case where parentheticals can be original to the text, and where editorial interjections have to be distinguished by brackets (this is also where you would expect to see [sic]ed misspellings).